Thursday, October 17, 2013

“The discovery of a skull could change what we know about man’s evolution”: Scott Pelley, right before a commercial break on the CBS Evening News this evening. But when Pelley reported the story, he spoke of human evolution. We are evolving, sometimes with astonishing speed, sometimes not fast enough.

I find in he or she a still appropriate rejoinder to the language of patriarchy that permeated my undergraduate education. My first undergraduate philosophy course: “The Problem of Man.” The professor was a woman. A key text: William Barrett’s Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958). And then there was William Faulkner: “Man will not merely endure; he will prevail.” Man oh man. I like humankind.

“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”

Don’t look for premiums orcoupons, as the cost ofthe thoughts blended inORANGE CRATE ART pro-hibits the use of them.